Self help messiah, p.37
Self-help Messiah, page 37
Carnegie often made a greater impact with his personal style than with his pedagogical injunctions. His genuine demeanor and encouraging tone left a lasting impression on many course instructors. During one training class, he discussed his mother’s great influence on his life to illustrate a point and, according to one participant, “he was so sincere and immersed in his thoughts that he openly wept and had to stop and compose himself. We all felt that part of his secret was his total sincerity and that he cared so very much for others.” One instructor, Arthur Secord, never forgot when Carnegie visited one of his classes in 1948, sat in the back row, and then left at the break without saying a word. In a couple of days, however, he received a copy of How to Win Friends with an autographed inscription in the front: “Hi, there, Art. There may be a better teacher of speech than you somewhere in captivity. If there is—we have never been able to find him.”27
But Carnegie could be stern when necessary. At one location, he visited a class and noticed that the instructor was slow in ringing the bell, thus allowing speakers to add an extra thirty seconds to their two-minute time limits. At the break, he called over the young man. “Under no condition should any speaker be allowed to speak beyond the allotted time. This is an ironclad rule and it must never be broken because it corrupts the rhythm of the class,” he insisted. “The Dale Carnegie classes must start on time and must stop on time—each and every session!” In another city, an instructor, obviously full of himself, went about saying that teaching the Carnegie course “is like taking candy from a baby.” When the founder overheard the snide remark, he dismissed the young man the next day. Carnegie firmly handled a difficult situation that arose when he was a guest teacher and a small group of salesmen, all from the same company, came to the session intoxicated and disrupted the proceedings. He stopped the class, announced that there would be a five-minute break, and strode to the back of the room. He told the miscreants to get out and stay out. When one of them protested that they had paid their tuition and had a right to stay, Carnegie replied, “It’s my course and I will not permit this behavior. You must leave.” They did.28
Ultimately, Carnegie sought one goal: to maintain the quality of his course and ensure that its human relations principles were being inculcated in students. He took pains to maintain standards and encourage excellence. At instructor refresher courses in the 1940s, Carnegie, often in concert with Whiting, would lead the demanding and invigorating sessions. A set of “guinea pig” students would give talks, and then “instructors sitting around the room would wait for a name to be called after being drawn out of a hat to see who would comment on the students’ efforts. Following this, other instructors would comment on the instructors as they did their work,” one participant described. “Mr. Carnegie and Mr. Whiting would supervise rather spontaneously this whole effort and I can remember they did not always see eye to eye with the instructors, or with each other. The result was that we had some very spirited discussions right in front of the students about what could have been done, what should have been done, and how it could have been better.”29
As the result of such rigorous efforts, the Carnegie Course met its mission with great success. With huge numbers of students and successful training methods, it even began to win grudging acceptance from the academic world. At the convention of the National Association of Teachers of Speech, Ray K. Immel, the dean of the School of Speech at the University of Southern California, startled his audience by announcing, “The best public speaking in America today—and the best teaching—is found in the classes of the Dale Carnegie Institute.” Skeptical of this assertion, Professor William A. D. Millison undertook to appraise the Carnegie Course in comparison to standard university offerings. After two years of research, he published his findings in the Quarterly Journal of Speech in early 1941 and came to the same conclusion. After examining the structure, methods, and instructors in the Carnegie Course, he marveled at their success “in stirring their students to an unusual amount of speaking activity and improvement.” The reason, he concluded, was Carnegie’s emphasis on improving the whole person, an approach that called into question academic pedagogy. “[I]t suggests that we have too long neglected the opportunity through speech to strengthen and develop the emotional life and attitudes of our students,” he wrote. “We have been so concerned with the practical side of speech—so determined to develop technical skill or artistic expression—we may have over-looked its social significance and its possible meaning to the individual student in terms of social adaptation and emotional adjustment. Perhaps we have yet to discover that our students have emotions as well as a brain, voice, and body.”30
The course, in concert with the tremendous popularity of How to Win Friends and his regular lecturing on its principles, sent Carnegie’s public stock soaring to a new high. In fact, his reputation grew so elevated by the 1940s that it transcended the confines of public speaking and self-improvement. People began to seek his opinion on the issues of the day. This disciple of modern success, many believed, could offer shrewd insights into and effective prescriptions for not only personal life but public affairs. Flattered, Carnegie took on the role of sage and pondered how his human relations principles could resolve social, cultural, and political problems. The results would be decidedly mixed.
In the late 1930s and early 1940s, as the rise of fascism triggered growing world tensions that finally exploded in war in Europe and portions of Asia, Carnegie increasingly encountered new questions. Traversing the country lecturing and teaching, he spoke with reporters who wondered how his human relations principles might help resolve the frightening global situation. His formula for human interaction, they suggested, might somehow be adapted by nations to find world peace. This novel situation created new pressures for the success writer.
Sometimes, admirers made Carnegie into an inspirational symbol of American values in a troubled world, an icon who melded individual effort, grit and determination, optimism, and concern for others into a creed that stood in stark contrast to fascist doctrine. “Almost as interesting as Mr. Dale Carnegie’s very American lecture the other evening was the very American audience which listened to the speaker with such vast interest,” observed one newspaper. “The easy-going, shrewd, optimistic and kindly philosophy of Mr. Carnegie—so evidently approved by his hearers—is as typical of the youthful, warm-hearted and utilitarian viewpoint of the United States as the Nietzschean philosophy is typical of the crowded Germany or the Machiavellian philosophy of old and disillusioned Italy.” One journalist suggested that the Nazis learn to avoid arguments, respect the other man’s opinion, and approach others in a friendly way. “Now, if Dr. Goebbels would only discover Mr. Carnegie’s immortal work! There, if you like, is a picture. Goebbels, seated cozily beside the fire, reading aloud while the Reichskanzler and Minister Goering listen in rapt attention. Such an event might make a new and much pleasanter man out of Hitler, not to mention his two pals,” he exclaimed. “It would lead to smiles and friendliness and cordial greetings. Then there might be an international kaffee-clatsch or a tea party completely unlike the grim meeting in Munich last September.”31
Reporters sometimes asked Carnegie directly how his principles might be applied to rectify the global crisis. He often demurred, wisely claiming that political matters were beyond his reach. In 1941, he was asked about world politics and his choice for president in the last election. “I didn’t vote,” he replied frankly. “I didn’t feel that I had enough information on the bewildering, complex problems at stake to make an intelligent choice. I don’t think there were 10,000 people in the country who did.” When questioned about his views on the United States’s Good Neighbor policy toward Latin America, he again refused to take a position, quipping, “my opinions have decreased in inverse proportion to my years.” The newspaper concluded that this expert on human relations “would not wade off into the topic of improving relations between nations.”32
At other times, Carnegie took the bait and ventured into the political arena. In the years before the Pearl Harbor attack, he assured audiences that “Americans are opposed to dictators,” observing that the United States was sending a significant portion of its war supplies to Britain and opining “it will not be long before they are sending very much more.” He spoke often about the Nazis. While granting that How to Win Friends was a best seller in Germany, Carnegie thought the book would have little impact on Hitler and his minions. “Suppose some of them do read it and believe it, that might affect the thinking of a few—but the propaganda of the government, the bombs and the concentration camps are the things that affect the people of Germany,” he ventured. “A book on friendliness would not have much chance.”33
By 1941, Carnegie had concluded that the Nazis were immune to the influence of human relations. “Hitler already can influence people, all right, but not with friendship. He has influenced Stalin and Mussolini, but I believe there isn’t a shred of friendship mixed up in it,” he told one newspaper. “I talked not long ago with a man who had ridden in an airplane with Hitler and his aides since the European conflict began. This man told me even his closest advisors rarely spoke to Hitler. There was, apparently, no friendliness in his makeup. I wouldn’t wish to tackle Hitler’s personality. It isn’t normal.” The Führer’s dark, abnormal tendencies made him unsusceptible to the advice in How to Win Friends. “You can’t deal with those fellows like Hitler, except with a gun. Primarily, Hitler is a gangster out to lick the world and the only thing that will stop him is guns,” Carnegie contended. “Even Jesus with his great Christian teachings of brotherly love finally saw fit to take the whip in order to drive the money lenders from the temple.”34
Carnegie’s rather banal comments on the Nazi threat were matched by a muddled assessment of rising tensions in Asia. Following a trip to East Asia in 1939, he was asked for his assessment of Japan in light of its brutal invasion of China. His reply shed little light. “The Japanese people follow very much the sort of principles expounded in my book. They are extremely gracious, friendly, and courteous and they are taught to be that way from childhood,” he explained. “It seems difficult, therefore, to account for their savagery in China. But we must remember that wars are dictated by the few who are in power.” He also noted that the Japanese had been shocked by the recent nonaggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and promptly removed all German flags from public buildings.35
More significantly, Carnegie suggested that Westerners had exaggerated the scope and intensity of the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, as well as its earlier occupation of Manchuria in 1931. Press reports had recounted the brutal massacre of tens of thousands of Chinese civilians by soldiers of the Japanese Imperial Army along with thousands of rapes and other atrocities. But Carnegie detected no evidence of such horrors. “I never heard a shot during the time I was over there,” he told the New York Daily Mirror. “In my opinion, an automobile trip from New York to San Francisco would be more dangerous than traveling to Harbin, Peking, Shanghai, and the distant borders of Tibet.” This benign assessment of Japanese intentions was reflected in a cartoon that appeared in that same newspaper along with Carnegie’s report. It showed a Japanese soldier sitting on a rock in the ocean, with two sharks circling about him displaying the Nazi swastika on one fin and the Soviet hammer and sickle on the other, as he frantically read How to Win Friends and Influence People.36
Eventually, despite the brutal invasions and political terror launched by Hitler, Tojo, and Mussolini, Carnegie insisted that the ideas in How to Win Friends, if given the chance, could shape international relations in a benevolent way. “If a friendly spirit and a determined desire to influence people peacefully were followed faithfully and intelligently by diplomats at their conference tables, there would be no war,” he told the Los Angeles Evening Herald-Express. When an interviewer asked about the root causes of the global crisis, Carnegie avoided mention of political ideologies, power politics, economic interests, or even clashing national goals. Instead, he pointed rather naïvely to personal traits and misfires in human relations. “Selfishness, that is what is causing most of the world’s troubles. I think practically all of our problems could be solved if everyone would follow the Golden Rule,” he claimed. “This war in Europe was caused by two egomaniacs who want to go down in history as the world’s greatest conquerors. Their desire to feel important caused them to plunge their nations into war. Greed and the desire to feel important cause all wars.”37
Such simplistic analysis reflected the limitations of Carnegie’s worldview. While the directives in How to Win Friends might bring miraculous results at the personal level, this did not translate automatically into the complex world of international politics. Analyzing Hitler as someone who “wanted to feel important” and recommending adherence to the Golden Rule offered little more than bromides in the dangerous world of the early 1940s.
This wobbly venture into international politics sometimes sent Carnegie falling flat on his face. In a long 1941 newspaper interview, he tried to apply Franklin Roosevelt’s famous declaration—“All we have to fear is fear itself”—to the looming threat of the Nazis. The result was embarrassing. “Dale Carnegie is not afraid of the big bad wolf, even if its name is Adolf Hitler, and he doesn’t think that any American is helping the situation by lying awake nights worrying,” the interviewer observed. “Fear, he believes, is the greatest destructive psychological force known. Even in the present world crisis, he thinks that the average American can do more for his country by conquering his fear of the uncertain future than in any other way.” Then the article quoted Carnegie’s own words. “How many of the things you worry about never even happen? Of course, we should not go blindly along doing nothing, but after we give aid to Britain and do everything we can to help America prepare for its defense, the best thing we can do is to be happy and normal, take things as they come, and cease to worry about the future,” he declared. “What if the very worst should happen, and we should be conquered by a dictator? Since history began, nations have existed under dictatorships and come out from under them. Don’t worry; think of the good things in life we have instead of the bad ones.” Such blind optimism appeared heedless, bizarre, even dangerous if taken seriously. Thinking happy thoughts while succumbing to dictatorship offered little guidance for navigating the dangerous waters of the early 1940s.38
After Pearl Harbor and the subsequent American entry into World War II, however, Carnegie thankfully abandoned his therapeutic nostrums regarding world affairs and embraced the war effort. He became an enthusiastic participant in war bond drives, appearing at shows around the country and urging citizens to financially support the nation’s military enterprises around the globe. In 1943, he participated in a war bond event in the nation’s capital. A full-page advertisement in The Washington Post announced the opportunity to meet this “brilliant author whose writings have influenced the lives of countless Americans at the WAR BOND SHOW, today, Monday, at 1:00 and 4:00.”39
Carnegie made a point of endorsing the draft, arguing that it would have a good effect on most young men. “Especially the spoiled whelps,” he added. “A year in the army, ten years in the army will do them good. For the majority of men, it would be an excellent thing. Good for them mentally and physically.” The adoption of How to Win Friends by certain elements in the American military especially delighted him. Upon hearing that it served as a textbook at the Army Air Forces officer-candidate school in Miami Beach, he said, “That’s the smartest thing I have yet heard about the Army. I read an article in Time that said that in Germany the officers are kind to their men and find out their sisters’ names and when their birthdays come. When every officer in our army knows the birthdays of his men’s sisters, then we will really be fighting the war. That is real leadership.” After the war ended, Carnegie proudly advertised that his course had been officially approved for “training veterans” under the GI Bill.40
Carnegie had somewhat better luck commenting on public affairs when he avoided callow assessments of international politics and addressed a topic about which he was qualified to speak: education. The curriculum in American public schools became a great concern to him in the 1940s, one that flowed out of his experience as a teacher and his formulations in How to Win Friends. Throughout the decade, he frequently spoke on the need to reform American teaching by moving it in a more practical direction. The theme aroused his passion.
Carnegie had become convinced that standard course offerings in American high schools and colleges were archaic. Decrying the existing system as “medieval” and “silly, ineffectual and benighted,” he told audiences that the modern world demanded a more “practical” curriculum. Instead of wasting time on subjects that had no practical use, schools should focus on preparing students to get jobs in the workaday world. In 1941, he denounced high schools for preparing students to take college entrance exams when they should be teaching them how to sell themselves to prospective employers. “The youth of today don’t even know how to apply for a job, and if they found one many of them couldn’t hold it,” Carnegie complained. Most students learned nothing about the personal qualities necessary to succeed in the modern world, he continued, but they knew all too much about “such subjects as French grammar, trigonometry, algebra, and Latin.”41
Warming to this theme in lectures and interviews, Carnegie insisted that one of the two big questions asked by young people was “What shall I do in life?” and that schools needed to address it squarely. (The other was “Who will be my mate?”) That meant less emphasis on arcane knowledge and more on vocational training. Schools should “throw out its algebra or geometry teacher and get a man to instruct vocational guidance. Give vocational guidance tests to students. Save hundreds and thousands of students the trouble of going to high school or college. Direct their energies along suited paths,” he insisted. This emphasis on practical training and tracking students according to abilities or interests would bring great benefits, Carnegie argued: suitable jobs, useful study programs, happier children.42
